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I think I'm doing it correctly, but when viewed in IE6 and Firefox 1.5, the extra paddin/margin isn't being chopped off by overflow:hidden. The page scrolls on with endless 30,000 high columns. What am I doing wrong? Thx. I don't want to use the faux columns method. I want to use this method, as it seems easier. I also want to stay away from Javascript, as that gets rather messy fast. Just simple CSS, with or without hacks.

What I want is my short-height Nav Bar to extend and match my main content area in the center. One thing about this site is that it is a long site. @ a vertical resolution of 1200, this page takes scrolling to read. This, I think, plays into my dilemma. Any help or pointers would be vastly appreciated.

The embarassingly simple secret is to use a vertically tiled background image to create the illusion of colored columns. For SimpleBits, my background image looks something like Figure 2 (proportions changed for demonstration), with a decorative stripey thing on the left, a wide white section for the content column, a 1 pixel border, and a light brown section for the right columnís background followed by the reverse of the left sideís decorative border.

I guess I'm not quite following. I've had success with the faux columns method now, but I have one quip.

I've got my Nav Bar at 20% left. I then did my repeating background Navi_Back.png at 20% left as well, thinking it would line up. It doesn't line up. Why? I had to use 22% left, and still it hangs out a little bit.